I wrote that Europe and Antarctica were the only continents not growing – I was wrong

I blogged the other day that every continent in the world was growing except Europe and Antarctica. It turns out I was wrong: Antarctica has bounced back impressively since the crash. As the blogger Random Spaniardpoints out, the chief economic activity on the southern continent is tourism, which is now recovering in line with the rest of the world:

It's the same picture everywhere. Here, according to the IMF, is what happened region by region in 2012: North America grew by 2.1 per cent; Latin America and the Caribbean by 3.7 per cent; Russia and the former CIS by 4.2 per cent; North Africa and the Middle East by 4.2 per cent; the rest of Africa by 5.4 per cent; the rest of Asia by 6.0 per cent. The EU's economy, by contrast, shrank by 0.3 per cent – and that of the eurozone by 0.9 per cent.

I realise that I'm in danger of becoming a bore on the subject, but it can't be said too often: we've locked ourselves into the only trade bloc on Earth that is in decline.